The Timebound

CHAPTER TWELVE

The Fracture of Lenora and the War of the Forgotten

Time split like a scream across glass.

In the garden between realities, Lenora stood not as Alexander remembered, but as something reshaped by the Span—woven of light and shadow, her soul stitched to multiple timelines, bleeding memory.

She remembered all of them.

And it was killing her.

---

Lenora's True State

"I'm not just me," Lenora whispered, voice cracking like glass under pressure. "I'm a thousand versions. A hundred deaths. A dozen lives you never lived."

Her eyes flickered through lifetimes—Lenora as a revolutionary, a queen, a scientist, a monster.

"I'm a convergence. A knot of time."

The Architect stepped from the broken sky.

He raised a hand made of equations.

"It is her existence that collapses the chronology. She is the root of the anomaly. She must be unmade."

Alexander stood between them.

"She is the reason. Not the error."

And with that, the first blow was struck.

---

The War of the Timewalkers

Time shattered into war.

Sister Yu arrived with the Chronoblack Scripture burning in her arms. Behind her came the Broken Choir—those twisted by the Span but loyal to Yu's cause.

Across the fields of fractured timelines, the Architect summoned his Host: reflections made solid, all the versions of those who almost were. Faceless kings. Future tyrants. Memories in armor.

Reality twisted under their feet.

Skies cracked open.

Words became weapons—literal sigils of power.

Alexander fought like a force of myth. Not as a man—but as an echo that refused to fade.

He fought through centuries in seconds, carving paths through paradox.

He reached Lenora.

He took her hand.

And in that instant, time… collapsed.

---

The Reset

A flash.

A silence.

A forgetting.

Across all of existence, every timewalker vanished.

Each scattered to a different thread of the multiverse.

Each memory wiped clean—names lost, wars erased.

No one remembered the Garden.

No one remembered the War.

Not even Alexander Holmes.

---

A New Life

Alexander awoke beneath the steel-blue sky of a modern city—its skyline filled with glass towers and gleaming machines.

Sirens, not screams.

Luxurious cars passed by. Drones hummed overhead. The world was fast, loud, electric.

He was found in an alley, barefoot, confused, looking no older than twenty.

No records. No history.

But something in him—some ache of purpose—remained.

A wealthy couple, the Belmonts, adopted him within weeks. Tech magnates with more money than peace, they saw in Alexander a curiosity, a quiet brilliance, a sadness they couldn't name.

He spoke softly. Read voraciously. Excelled at everything and asked nothing in return.

He became Alexander Belmont.